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>> Pete Williams: Welcome to this week's edition of PreneurCast. I'm Pete Williams. And as
always, by my side is the Ren to my Stimpy, the Pebbles to my Bamm-Bamm, Dom Goucher.
>> Dom Goucher: There was a brief moment there where I really thought I was going to get
to be the Spot to your Hong Kong Phooey. >> Pete: I thought I'd leave that one to you
because everyone's been tweeting that to you this morning.
>> Dom: I got some support for that. I'd like to think the fans out there, the listeners,
for their support to the ‘Spot to the Hong Kong Phooey' thing. But yeah, Ren to Stimpy,
Pebbles to Bamm-Bamm. It's really going downhill again.
>> Pete: Alright, well, it's better than Jay to my Silent Bob which I was going to start
with, >> Dom: Hey, hey. Oh no, I'll go with that,
Jay to the Silent Bob. >> Pete: So, how's everything been? Another
crazy week in the world of PreneurCast and all things Dom Goucher? Been to London and
the UK, is that right? You've been traveling? >> Dom: Yeah, I barely stood still over the
weekend. I've been through various parts of the UK, London and London, went up to the
Derbyshire area and then back down to London, and then back here all in the space of a few
days, just whistled by with a brief bit of snow in between.
>> Pete: Fantastic, fantastic. >> Dom: Yeah, we cover all weather types in
this show. >> Pete: Hang on; we've got a rule not to
talk about the weather, man. >> Dom: You got one in the other week, shut
up. >> Pete: So this week is all about branding,
and brands. >> Dom: Yes, I'm interested in the topic of
branding. Its reared its head a few times over the last couple of months as I've shifted
what I'm doing away from the pure business of the media production that I'm known for,
and becoming a little bit more of a person in my own right through things like the 7
Levers Mastermind and other projects that we're working on. You've mentioned a couple
of times just offhand that you have a couple of thoughts on branding, and they're not particularly
positive; so I'm interested. >> Pete: Well, we can definitely delve deep
into that and I'll do the soapbox rant-type thing that we occasionally do here on PreneurCast.
We can definitely delve into that today. >> Dom: And you do it so well. Before we kick
off into that one, I'd like to give a shout-out and thanks to our two show sponsors, the first
one of which is Read It For Me, the excellent book summary service; and we've had Steve
on a couple of shows ago talking about how he does the book reviews himself. It's a fantastic
episode in its own right, but we love Read It For Me.
It's a great way to preview and review, and learn a bit about popular business and personal
development books with some fantastic multimedia resources inside their membership area. And
if you go to ReadItFor.Me/PreneurCast, you'll get a special deal on a membership at Read
It For Me. And it's well worth a check-out anyway.
If you go to that page, there's a little video that Pete and I put together showing you what's
inside the membership area. Give it a go; it's a great way to find out about books,
especially if you're a bit time-poor and you want to be a bit more efficient leveraging
your time, then you can cover an awful lot of topics and publications just going through
Steve's reviews. So that's a great one. >> Pete: Absolutely. And it's a free trial
too. You get a bit of a free trial with a discount coupon when you decide to subscribe,
and everyone loves to subscribe to the service once they test it out because it's amazing.
>> Dom: Indeed, and thanks to Steve and the team over at Read It For Me for sponsoring
this week's show. >> Pete: Absolutely. Alright, let me walk
and step out onto the soapbox. Let's go. >> Dom: Little creaking sound there.
>> Pete: Now, before we delve into this I want to get your context on all of this because
you're the person who instigated it as you alluded to earlier in this episode. Where
do you want to go? Where do you want to take this? What's your idea in terms of the show
topic? Because branding's a big, big rabbit hole.
>> Dom: It is. My personal angle on this is actually personal branding; supporting and
being consistent with a personal brand, and this is a bit of an esoteric one, but whether
or not you can be the brand. This may not be the thing that offends you so much, but
one of the things that pops up from time to time is you have people and you have brands.
And some people are brands and some people are people. A lot of it, a lot of people really
simplified this form just having their Twitter handles or domain names, and they're known
for those. For example, David Sparks – we talked about
the Mac Power Users podcast a few weeks ago, and David Sparks in and of himself is not
really anything. But if you say MacSparky to a Mac person, everybody knows MacSparky.
He's the guy who does the Mac Power Users podcasts, and that's his Twitter handle and
that's his domain; and that's how he gets his message out there through the MacSparky
brand. It kind of focuses people on who he is and what he's about.
Whereas, on the other end of the scale, if you take Ed Dale's recent incarnation – most
recent incarnation, EdDale.com, that's Ed and everything about Ed. It's marketing-centric,
but Ed is Ed; Ed is Ed Dale. Previously – and he's moved away from it now, he used to be
Tubby Nerd. And I'm not sure that was the kind of brand that he really wanted to get
stabilized out there. But Ed is Ed, and Ed covers an awful lot of things within the umbrella
of who Ed Dale is. But let's say starting from nowhere, as I
would put myself by comparison to such a shining light as you, I was just interested on your
thoughts on whether or not you should be trying to be a brand as a person and also as a company
for some of the listeners out there who are more than solo entrepreneurs, who run companies
and other bigger enterprises. Whether the brand is the be all and end all. Whether it's
a good goal. >> Pete: OK, this is a very deep rabbit hole
with lots of tunnels coming off it. Yes and no is probably the answers. I think there
are a couple of things you've touched on there. As a person you have to be known as something.
You have to be known as ______ Guy. A good friend of mine – well not a good friend,
but a friend of mine, Scott Ginsberg has written a number of books around this. He's The Nametag
Guy. He actually wears a nametag every single day and has done so for some three thousand
and odd hundred days now, or maybe even more. Every day he wears a nametag ‘Hi My Name
is Scott' to the point where he actually got it tattooed on his chest, an actual nametag.
It's quite funny. But Scott Ginsberg writes a lot about personal branding and stuff like
that; so we might actually try and get him on the show one day to discuss it too, which
should be pretty cool. But I think you need to be known for something, and that – if
I say Tony Robbins, who's Tony Robbins? >> Dom: I immediately think this really huge
guy. But yeah, personal development. >> Pete: Lance Armstrong?
>> Dom: Cycling? >> Pete: And Cancer?
>> Dom: That shouldn't define you, Peter. You know that, don't you?
>> Pete: No, but that's what he's known for. That's what he's known for. If we go into
the little internet marketing community, you've got Jeff Walker; he's a Product Launch guy.
You've got Andy Jenkins, video guy. You have to be known for something so you can be differentiated.
If you try and be all things to all people like any business, it's not going to work.
You can't do all things to all people. Look at a lot of the department stores these days.
They're not working as well as they used to, particularly in this day and age, because
they're trying to be all things to all people. You're a lot better off being boutique and
be known for being a market leader around that particular topic you're getting know
for. Does that make sense? >> Dom: Absolutely. Yeah, that's a good baseline.
>> Pete: So that's the starting point. I think you do have to be known for something; and
this is a conversation that Rob Somerville, Ed Dale's right-hand man, and I have had quite
a bit over the last couple years about even trying to work out my own positioning. And
it's probably not relevant to this podcast too much, but I think that's really, really
important. Because a brand as such, in terms of the word ‘brand' in its own right, is
basically who you are or it's what you stand for.
As I said, it's how you're defined and differentiated. But you did touch on something else in that
little introduction-type segment that you just spoke about. You talked about, should
I be doing branding or should someone be doing branding? And I think, and this is where you're
talking about things like Twitter handles and what else you're known for online, that
branding as an exercise in its own right is like a form of advertising where you actually
are just out there getting exposure for your brand.
It's like buying billboards on the side of the highway and putting up the McDonald's
logo and nothing else on the billboard. To me, that's an absolute waste of money, it's
a missed opportunity. Branding in terms of actively going out there to advertise your
brand and build your brand should realistically be more of a by-product of the direct response
marketing that you should be doing to build your brand. You would never want to do brand
advertising; you want to be doing direct response advertising around a brand. That means branding
is a by-product. >> Dom: Now, that speaks directly back to
the Preneur Hierarchy that we talked about a few shows ago, where at the top of the pyramid,
that brand awareness advertising that you just talked about, is widely spray-and-pray
advertising. >> Pete: Absolutely. It's immeasurable, it's
untrackable; it's just a wasted opportunity where you could have a direct response result
from the marketing you're doing. And if you look at David Sparks and take that as an example
– of course, when you actually register a domain name, you either register it in your
personal name or as MacSparky; and then it's just logical from a direct response consistency
perspective to use the same brand being MacSparky as your Twitter handle, as your Facebook label,
as all these labels and usernames. That just makes sense from a marketing perspective
because it makes it easier for your customers to find you on different platforms. So I would
say you do that for a consistency and partly a direct marketing reason, not for doing it
for the whole branding-side of things; that is a side benefit. That is the bonus. But
you do want to have that consistency through all your marketing because that just helps
build the response. Because as soon as someone has a relationship
with you, if we go back to that Preneur Hierarchy, the easiest people to sell to are the people
at the bottom of the Hierarchy who have dealt with you before. If they've dealt with you
before and they know you as Tony Robbins or MacSparky, or whoever it may be, if they see
you in a different platform, that consistency and that pre-trust comes with you.
If you look at what Google+ is doing these days, you will see that obviously throughout
Google search results, they're actually doing this authorship thing to help encourage click-through
rates and get people better experience on the search results. What they're actually
doing is putting the author's little icon and photo and stuff on search results. I was
doing a bit of an egotistical search like we all do the other day for marketing podcasts,
which is a term we're trying to rate PreneurCast for.
And we're, I think, on the second page right now and moving up; and next to that is actually
a little photo of me, because I've been linked with the authorship of the podcast, and that
helps that consistent brand. It's the same image that I use across all my platforms online
to actually build that consistency around. I'm not doing that for a branding perspective,
I'm doing that to actually keep the brand consistent through my marketing. Can you see
that distinction? Does that make sense? >> Dom: I can, and it's actually a really
interesting distinction, because I don't think a lot of the people think about it that way.
There definitely are the two sides to what I was talking about, and I'm glad that you
picked them out and separated them. There is that identity, brand identity, yeah? Where,
as you said, the consistency – if somebody comes and finds you through one channel, it's
easy to find you on another channel because you have a consistent brand identity.
That, I think, is obvious to a lot of people – not obvious, but it's important to a lot
of people and I think it's the easiest thing to get a grasp on. But that second side of
it, where, as you say, branding should be, brand promotion should be a by-product of
what you do. It's almost speaking to the market leadership concept. That for example, David
Sparks, let's just carry on with that for a while, and the MacSparky brand as it were;
he doesn't jump up and down, wear MacSparky t-shirts and the rest of that.
The name MacSparky has been associated with the great work that David Sparks does in the
Mac Power Users podcast and in the blog post that he makes, and even the books that he
writes. He's become a market leader, and so that label has been associated with that entity;
and I think that's really – if I was to progress, as you say, it's not really for
this stuff, for this podcast; but if I was going this way, that's what I would want to
have happen. I would want somebody to be able to attribute
that label to what I do, to what I've done, to the material that I produce, to the content
that I produce that I put out there. I wouldn't want somebody to go, "Oh, yeah. No, I remember
that because I saw some guy wearing a t-shirt, or it was a billboard, or whatever.” It's
a little roundabout, but it does come back to the market leadership thing. That if you
do good work and you put out good content and you are a good source of information in
your market, you become known. So your brand awareness grows as a by-product of the work
that you do. Is that kind of what you're saying? >> Pete: Almost. I think there's a slight
distinction there. There's no question you have to put out good work. Anybody who wants
to put out crap is just kidding themselves that they're going to be successful. But it's
not just about putting out good content, or good products, or good services; they still
have to actually market it. It's not about the product, it's about the marketing. But
it's not about the branding. So you have to put out good content first and foremost, but
then you have to do marketing. And even if people say that putting out good
content will not sell itself, that's still marketing by actually encouraging that first
tweet; encouraging that first follower; or at the bottom of your blog post, giving people
the call-to-action to actually respond with a comment; that is part of marketing. That's
marketing and selling the engagement, which then obviously creates this social media wave
that everyone is talking about at the moment. But you still have to do the marketing side
of things; and it's not about the branding, it's about the direct response marketing and
having a call-to-action at the end of a blog post saying, "Hey, tell me about your experience
with this topic I just wrote about,” is a call-to-action. That is a direct response
marketing element that you have just put in your blog post. So you've got to have the
good content to get people to get to the end of the article to read that, but that's still
a call-to-action which is a direct response marketing contact.
Having the retweet buttons on your blog post is a direct response action, so you still
have to have those actions in place to get to that tipping point that Malcolm Gladwell
talks about before you get the sneezes and the people, or the flu, or whatever he's talking
about to actually spread the virus that is your high-quality content, or your high-quality
product, or the great service that you are offering down at the local truck stop. You
still have to actually encourage that conversation. >> Dom: Yeah, I appreciate the more detailed
explanation of that. As you say, you can't just publish great content and then expect:
A) people to find it and B) people to talk about it and to help you grow that brand.
With this definition, your little soapbox if you're still up on it, I'm just trying
to be clear in my mind. It's, as you say, not about the brand, it's not about the product.
So over-branding things for example is, I think, and I'm just trying to get a handle
on a good example here that we can put out of how not to do this, and something that
I came across the other day was the exact opposite which was under-branding or a complete
lack of marketing. A client, a local client here that I'm working with, bringing all of
the new-world marketing techniques to a small fishing village in Spain is a very interesting
opportunity. >> Pete: People who want to buy umbrellas
to keep out of the sun? >> Dom: I wish it were that easy. I came across
this catalogue of services – printed document, yes. We're in the age of print over here.
I came across a catalogue of services. They paid to have it produced, and they paid to
have it printed and whatever; and they were quite proud of this. I picked up this document
and I looked at the front cover. It clearly states it's a catalogue of services.
Pretty picture of a market-relevant photograph on the front cover; and I flicked through
a few pages, and I flicked to the back page, and buried in the bottom-corner of the back
page was the name of the company. And even smaller than the name of the company was the
contact details of the company. Throughout the document, there were no actual calls-to-action.
There was barely a mention of the website on the back page or any other means of contacting.
There certainly wasn't a suggestion that people who had waded through this marketing material
should do anything with it, like, heaven offend, call the company. And at the end of the day,
as I said, the actual company providing the services, their lifeblood was people calling
them, booking lessons as it were, in this particular market. The company name just really
wasn't evident on the document. So you could go the other way with this.
>> Pete: Well, see, my issue with that little tale that you just shared is more about the
lack of calls-to-action than the lack of company name. The company name fundamentally, it's
irrelevant. It's not about the product, or the business name in my opinion; it's about
making clear, concise, effective communication about the benefits someone's going to derive
from experiencing this service; and then throughout the document, having ample opportunities for
that person to respond whether it be a phone number, a physical address, a website address,
whatever it might be. That's what needs to happen. Having the company
name and logo in the bottom right-hand corner of the last page, in my opinion, is not a
bad thing. If you've got strong headlines, good graphics, engaging copy with calls-to-action,
I'm 100% fine with that. If it's a direct-response medium, they're probably not going to know
necessarily who you are anyway. If you're reaching that third level of the Hierarchy,
you're not talking to past customers and you're not talking to people who are actually already
in your funnel, you're communicating to searchers, people going out there actively searching
for a solution to the problem that you solve. They're probably not going to have an experience
with your brand historically anyway. So it doesn't matter about your brand because they're
not going to be making the initial decision whether they should communicate and hop into
your funnel based on your name and your logo. They're going to be making that decision based
on the headline, the copy, the experience, the pitch you make. So that's got to be the
focus. If you're in an industry where people are
buying stuff in a long purchase cycle where they need to get referrals, they need to actually
search around, look around; then your name is important because they might go and start
searching for that and talking to people about, how did you experience Acme Inc. when you
did this historically? But if it's simply a direct response-type purchase, like I'm
going to figure out whose sunbed am I going to hire on the beach of Spain, that is not
going to be a brand-related purchase. That is going to be an outcome-related purchase,
and brand is irrelevant at that point. To give you a bit of an example, when we started
the telco company we, didn't have a brand. And obviously, we very much built that national
telecommunications company off the back of AdWords. That was the key driver for us. People
went to Google with a problem which was, ‘need a damn phone system,' and then they found
us because we were ranking number one for SEO and AdWords and all that sort of stuff,
had very compelling copy, huge range, great prices, all that good stuff.
Our logo was on the side, but no one knew who we were, and that didn't stop us to grow.
So it wasn't about the brand, it was about the product and service we could offer. That's
my big angle on the issue with the experience you just gave, it's not the logo, the logo
can be in the bottom right-hand corner of the last page. To me, if everything else is
compelling enough, that's a secondary consideration. >> Dom: Really, really good. Really good take
on what I put forward there; and I do understand that. That's really what I was looking for
from you with this little soapbox piece, a clear example. So thankfully, you made one
out of what I gave you. The scary thing about that document was the absolute lack of any
attribute that we've talked about. I wasn't per se complaining that the logo was so small
or anything particularly like that, it was that there's no real way of identifying.
The name and contact details are your last best hope for contact. If you don't do anything
else with your document, if there's no real call-to-action, if there's nothing else, then
somebody being able to at least identify your company name and contact you via a phone number…
>> Pete: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Why would you have a marketing piece that doesn't have a call-to-action
in it? >> Dom: I just described one to you.
>> Pete: Yes, I understand that, and I see what you're saying. My issue with that is
you're saying your issue is the call-to-action or the phone number is the last chance you've
got. That should be the sole purpose of the damn marketing piece. If you're doing any
marketing that doesn't have a clear call-to-action in it, stop it right now. Anybody who's listening
– I know you're not doing this Dom, but I'm ranting, lecturing the listeners right
now. This can be the action point for this week:
Take a moment and just digest all the marketing pieces that you're doing right now; whether
it be a website, a brochure, a business car, a flyer, whatever it might be, your vehicles
that you might have for your service team. If they don't have calls-to-action on them,
you're doing branding; you're not doing marketing or direct response marketing which is what
builds businesses. Any piece of material out there with some
information and your logo without a clear definitive identifiable call-to-action is
not direct response marketing. You're doing branding. And hopefully, people have realized
by now that branding should be a by-product of the direct response marketing, because
the key is hook, pitch, call-to-action, branding – in that order.
That's what your marketing piece should be. If you can't fit the branding element onto
your marketing piece because it's taken up with a hook, i.e. headline, pitch, the main
elements with the pros and the solutions you offer, call-to-action, and there's no room
on the rest of that DL flyer or A4 print, then leave it off. Don't worry about that.
Yes, you missed the opportunity to brand as a by-product, but that's OK because it was
a free bonus anyway you would have got. It doesn't need to be there.
>> Dom: See, that's better. That's the Pete that I know and love way up there on his soapbox.
That was a proper rant. >> Pete: I was trying to be conservative.
I don't want to offend listeners; we love them all. I don't want to offend them and
make them run away crying. >> Dom: OK, fair enough. The interesting and
last part of this story about this document though was actually that they'd given over
the space on this back cover to branding, but it wasn't for them and their primary product
or brand. It was actually for a new product that they were trying to build awareness for.
And so the entire catalogue of services was actually overshadowed by this huge, big, awareness
activity. There was nothing else about it, there was nothing else to it. There was a
quarter or a half-page logo of this offshoot nonprofit thing that they were doing, this
activity that they were undertaking. It was another marketing activity that they'd undertaken
that they were trying to get airtime for, so they printed it on the back of this catalog.
I mean, I realize that we don't want to offend people and we don't want people to run off
crying; but seriously, folks, listen to what Pete said. It's not about the branding, or
it is – it's hook, pitch, call-to-action. And I'm sorry; but if you can't get your big
shiny logo on there, oh well. >> Pete: As big as my ego is, I've learned
to get it out of the way. And that's what everyone needs to do.
>> Dom: That's another very good thing, because I think that's a big problem for people. We
see this. You and I do little website reviews for clients and things; and we do exactly
do these assessments, these quick triages that we suggest as we did in our action point.
You look at what you're doing, your website, and certainly landing pages on your website
should have one job. Work out what that job is. If you're sending
AdWords traffic to a page and that page has more than one call-to-action on it or is overloaded
with branding information, it's not focused; it needs tidying up.
>> Pete: Yeah, absolutely. >> Dom: If somebody clicks on an AdWords ad,
that's predominantly not going to be about your branding. It may be about someone else's
brand. You might have advertised that you sell a particular product, like your telco
company stocks certain equipment and your headsets company stocks certain brands of
equipment. They may have an identifier with somebody else's plan; but they certainly haven't
identified with yours when they go there, have they?
>> Pete: No, not at all. Most people don't, and to a certain extent, I don't want to go
too deep into this. But we have a number of websites, obviously, printing various elements
and business units. And most of them are just keyword-driven URLs, it's not even a branded
URL. So they're definitely not clicking through because of a brand, they're clicking through
because the ad communicates an easy solution to the problem they're searching for.
>> Dom: That's it. Your ad and that short number of characters, that's your hook.
>> Pete: Exactly. >> Dom: There's no space for branding, or
awareness, or marketing of that kind. It's all hook.
>> Pete: Yeah, absolutely. And this just kind of relates to this, and it's probably going
to reiterate some of the stuff we've already spoken about today. But I was thinking, digesting
this whole thing that you brought up in the last week's episode about today's topic, and
a friend of ours, Tim Reid from Small Business Big Marketing and other fantastic podcasts
by some Australians that I think everyone should listen to; it's a great show where
they promote on a weekly basis, just interviews with various business owners of how they've
succeeded at what they do. When he consults with clients, the first thing
he really tries to distill and get them to try and understand is – let me try and get
this right, it's work out what you're going to say before you work out where to put it.
And I guess you can apply that statement to what we're talking to today. It's important
to work out what you're going to say. This is your marketing message. What do you stand
for? What do you want to be known for? What solutions do you offer?
And then once you get that right, then you can work out the best place to actually put
it on and put it out there to get the response you need. So it's all about figuring out what
your brand is and who you are and what you stand for, and how you want to communicate
that. Now he's talking generally when he says more about, "OK, what sort of flavor do you
want the language to be for your brand?” And that's OK to have and think about building
your brand that way in terms of, do you want to be known as a clean-cut accountant who's
all about the numbers and very formal, or you're wanting to be a very fun, cool shoe
store down the road that's all about engagement and fun and things like that? That'll dictate
the marketing messages and the language you use in your marketing.
That makes sense because, again, that fits back to who you want to be known for and what
you want to be known for. That's a part of being brand-aware or brand-conscious. But
going out there and just sticking your logo on billboards and banners and on the side
of your van is completely wasted. If you're Australian and you've got a work van, and
all you've got on there is your logo or your business name, that's branding and it's a
complete waste in opportunity. You should be putting on there the benefits
you do, the guarantee you give, the phone number, the website people can respond to
when they see your truck parked on the sidewalk at the front of the fence that you're creating
and constructing for the homeowner. People can see the workmanship and they go, "Oh,
look, there's the van. I'll call and actually book that person for a quote as well.” That's
what Tim talks about when he says work out what you're going to say before you work out
where to put it, and I think that's a relevant thing to add into the conversation today.
>> Dom: Yeah, I do like the point. And just to bring it all back together for a second,
as you say, it's OK. In fact it's important to understand what you stand for, to have
a clear idea what your message is, what your values are, and that's part of your brand
values, that's part of the definition of your brand. And we're not against that, and nothing
that we've said is again that, it's important. People need to know, as you said, I think
this is a really good thing to just emphasize: In this market, in this day and age, you or
your company need to be known for something, and you need to be almost niche in what it
is that you're known for. Be – I loved that word, you said, ‘be boutique' about it.
Be specific about what you do and don't do. So that you can become known and people can
focus on that. But in terms of getting the message out there,
very few people –- and I hate to break this to the bigger brands and the bigger business,
but very few people focus on a brand when they're looking for something, because they
may not know about the brand that they're looking for. What they're looking for, as
you said in the last thing you said, was they're looking for the solution to a problem. And
if you can communicate that, you've solved that problem, they don't care what your company
is called. They don't care what color your logo is. They don't care about any of that
stuff that people spend so much time and effort on.
What they care about is do you solve their problem, and can you solve their problem anytime
soon? And so your job is, as you said, back to the point you made, is about the hook.
Can you create a hook, as you said on the side of the van, don't spend the whole side
of your van with the logo and your name; tell them what you do. Boiler servicing. You write
‘boiler servicing' in big letters on the side of your van, and ‘Call me for a quote,'
which is your call-to-action. I imagine that your call rate will probably go up quite significantly,
and specifically for people that want their boiler servicing.
>> Pete: Absolutely. Absolutely, That's exactly what we're trying to communicate today, so
I think we've put a nice little bow on it, haven't we?
>> Dom: And well inside time, sir. I think now is a good opportunity though to just take
a little second to talk about the second sponsor. He says being all corporate, I'm going quite
corporate, aren't I? I think I'm going to have to stop this.
>> Pete: Definitely with the sponsors, yes. >> Dom: Yeah. Really, I swear, there's no
script. >> Pete: I feel like I should be putting on
a smoking jacket and getting a cigar out for this section.
>> Dom: There isn't even a mind map on the screen in front of me. We're that freeform
this week. I'm going to borrow a machine. But our second sponsor, we're very grateful
to Audible, the audiobook company. We regularly either talk about books that we've read, or
we recommend books that we've read, or we suggest you go and read a bit more in depth
on a topic. And to find out what's out there and get an awareness of it and maybe even
an expert overview; at the beginning of the podcast, we recommended our other sponsor,
Read It For Me. It is a great way to get some coverage and
just really get an awareness of the books and publications. But if you actually want
to consume the whole book and you want to do it in a very efficient way, then Audible.com
is fantastic because you can download pretty much any book, certainly the majority of the
ones we've talked about. You can download a book from Audible.com onto your portable
audio-playing device – no favoritism on this podcast – iPhone, iPod, iPad.
And you can listen to it at normal speed, or as we recommend, at 2-speed – get double
the work done. We have an offer from Audible Audiobooks. And if you go to AudibleTrial.com/PreneurCast,
you'll get access to a free trial of the Audible service, and also a coupon to download any
book from their service to give it a try. And we do both use Audible.com, both Pete
and I; we both recommend it. It's a great way to consume books while possibly you're
doing something else like driving, or if you're Pete, exercising.
>> Pete: Absolutely, I've been using their service for a couple of years; I've found
it absolutely fantastic. I love the audiobook stuff. I've been doing it since I was in high
school, and it's probably the cause of my enthusiastic fast-paced speaking style. I
listen to so many books at 2-speed, so I blame the education for my fast talking.
>> Dom: That's an interesting thing to blame education for. Most people blame it for other
things. >> Pete: That justification helps me sleep
at night. >> Dom: Yeah, you sell it any way you can.
I would just like to point out actually about the sponsors, because it's a relatively new
thing. I'd just like to emphasize, these sponsors, there's two things that make these two sponsors
stand out. The first one, and it's very, very important, both Pete and I use these services.
And we don't use them because they're sponsoring the podcast; we've been users of the service
for some time. Certainly in the case of Audible.com, and Pete was involved with Read It For Me
for some time before it became a sponsor for the show.
And secondly, both these companies are providing some form of discount or coupon or other thing
to PreneurCast listeners. So it's not that these companies are funding us and therefore
we're talking about them, which is fairly often the meaning of the word sponsor; but
actually you the listeners are getting something out of this, as well as we can wholeheartedly
recommend these services. And we'd like to continue like that, with our sponsors. We'd
like to be able to say that we use the services, and that our listeners can get something out
of it as well. >> Pete: Well put. So, in terms of getting
something out of this for the listeners, what is the action point for this week? We spoke
about people taking a moment to look at all the various marketing mediums they currently
have in their business – be it a website, a brochure, a business card, a corporate van,
street signage, anywhere that people interact with your marketing messages; and actually
getting a feel for – are they, do they, should they have a direct response call-to-action
as part of the message? If they don't, put an action plan in place
to actually make that happen. You'll see a very easy instant spike in inquiries and traffic
and leads to your business, because you're just tweaking what you're already doing. You
need that little bit of leverage extra out of what you're already doing, and I guess
that's the key action point for today. >> Dom: Absolutely. And remember that the
significant order of things that people follow is there should be a hook, there should be
a pitch, and there should be a call-to-action. And if you can fit it on, there should be
some branding. But definitely check that out, and in next week's show, Pete, what do you
think? >> Pete: Well, something that you and I were
discussing that would make a fantastic episode is talking about marketing assets. Now, this
is an extension of a presentation that a friend of ours gave, Eugene Ware, who is the genius
behind Noble Samurai, the software company that makes some fantastic marketing applications
for online businesses. He did a presentation in London, maybe almost two years ago now,
made it 18 months ago. Two years ago, I think, it would have been…
>> Dom: Yeah, yeah. >> Pete: At a conference that I spoke at and
that you were at. He spoke about marketing assets, and it was such a fantastic presentation.
The message and the distinctions that he made is definitely worth a read, or writing and
sharing and discussing on the show because it's interesting when you actually sit down
and think about what are all the assets you have in your business that relate to marketing.
Most people, when they think about assets for their business, they're thinking about
the trucks, the tools, the computers, the building, physical accounting-based assets.
But if we look at this from a marketing perspective, we're going to discuss what are all the assets
you have in your marketing that you can grow, that you can have a consistent ROI on. So
make sure you check out next week's show because I'm super excited. I'm going to revisit Eugene's
presentation. I'm going to actually try and have a chat to Eugene about it to see what
are the distinctions he's developed internally off the back of that presentation in the 18
months. And we'll repurpose it and share it all to everyone on next week's PreneurCast
episode. >> Dom: Yeah, I'm really looking forward to
it myself as well. It was one of the standout presentations of that particular conference
because it was about business and marketing; and for me, it gave a new perspective. I've
had – as you say, 18 months to apply some of the things that Eugene talked about, and
had a little bit of a think about it. So I think we can both put our own spin on that
material. It's going to be an interesting show.
>> Pete: Looking forward to it. See you next week, Dom. And for all you listeners, hope
to see you on Twitter, @preneur for me. @dgoucher, what is it Dom? I keep forgetting.
>> Dom: We need to sort that branding out, don't we? It's @dgoucher.
>> Pete: @dgoucher for you. PreneurMedia.tv is the home of the podcast, so you can get
all the show notes, the transcripts, the links. There's also Facebook comments on there, so
you can leave questions and feedback for the show. But when it comes to feedback, as we
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online through social media, as they say. Until next week, see you guys!